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Etherchannel: By. Eng. Ayman Boghdady

Etherchannel allows bundling multiple physical links into a single logical link to increase bandwidth and provide redundancy. It uses protocols like PAgP and LACP to negotiate the link bundle across devices. The configuration must match on both ends, including speed, duplex, VLANs, and mode. Etherchannel provides load balancing across the physical links and will continue working if one link fails. Administrators can check the status using show commands and modify the load balancing method.

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Ayman Boghdady
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54 views19 pages

Etherchannel: By. Eng. Ayman Boghdady

Etherchannel allows bundling multiple physical links into a single logical link to increase bandwidth and provide redundancy. It uses protocols like PAgP and LACP to negotiate the link bundle across devices. The configuration must match on both ends, including speed, duplex, VLANs, and mode. Etherchannel provides load balancing across the physical links and will continue working if one link fails. Administrators can check the status using show commands and modify the load balancing method.

Uploaded by

Ayman Boghdady
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Etherchannel

By. Eng. Ayman Boghdady


Etherchannel

Etherchannel

known as link aggregation or port-channel

Etherchannel is a technology that lets you bundle multiple physical links


into a single logical link

If one of the computers would send traffic that exceeds 100 Mbit
of bandwidth we'll have congestion and traffic will be dropped

2
Etherchannel

Bundle all physical links into a logical link with the combined bandwidth

By combining 4x 100 Mbit I now have a 400 Mbit link


3
Etherchannel

❑ Etherchannel will do load balancing among the different links


that we have and it takes care of redundancy

❑ Once one of the links fails it will keep working and use the links
that we have left

maximum number of links you can use: 8 physical interfaces

Configure an Etherchannel

Dynamically configure an etherchannel using protocols :


• PAgP (Cisco proprietary)
• LACP (IEEE standard)

It's also possible to configure a static etherchannel without these


protocols doing the negotiation of the link for you
4
Etherchannel
If you are going to create an etherchannel you need to make sure that
all ports have the same configuration

• Duplex has to be the same


• Speed has to be there same
• Same native AND allowed VLANs
• Same switchport mode (access or trunk)

If you want to configure PAgP you have a number of options

❑ On
(interface becomes member of the etherchannel but does not negotiate)

❑ Desirable
(interface will actively ask the other side to become an etherchannel)

❑ Auto
(interface will wait passively for the other side to ask to become an etherchannel)

❑ Off
(no etherchannel configured on the interface) 5
Etherchannel

The configuration of PAgP

6
Etherchannel

The switch will create a portchannel interface

The port-channel interface can be configured

7
Etherchannel

Use the show etherchannel port-channel


command to check if the port-channel is active or not

8
Etherchannel

If you have many etherchannels you can also use the


show etherchannel summary command

It will give you a quick overview of all the etherchannels and the
interfaces that are in use
9
Etherchannel

Overview with all the different options

Configuring your etherchannel as “on” doesn't use any negotiation so it will


fail if the other side is configured for auto or desirable

10
Etherchannel

LACP is similar to PAgP


❑ On
(interfaces becomes member of the etherchannel but does not negotiate)

❑ Active
(interface will actively ask the other side to become an etherchannel)

❑ Passive
(interface will wait passively for the other side to ask to become an etherchannel)

❑ Off
(no etherchannel configured on the interface)

It's basically the same thing as PAgP but the terminology is different

11
Etherchannel

12
Etherchannel

13
Etherchannel

use the show etherchannel port-channel command again to verify our


configuration again

14
Etherchannel

The configuration of PAgP and LACP is similar

PAgP can only be used between Cisco devices

LACP is a IEEE standard, you can use it to form etherchannels


with devices from other vendors

15
Etherchannel

Etherchannel load-balance

the default configuration is load-balances based on the source MAC address


You can use the global port-channel load-balance command to
change this behavior

16
Etherchannel

The default load-balancing


mechanism is source MAC address

This means that ALL traffic from one MAC address will be sent down on
the same physical interface

MAC address AAA will be sent using Switch A’s fa0/13 interface
MAC address BBB will be sent using Switch A’s fa0/14 interface
MAC address CCC will be sent using Switch A’s fa0/13 interface
MAC address DDD will be sent using Switch A’s fa0/14 interface

17
Etherchannel

Since Switch A have multiple computers


this is fine

both physical links on Switch A will be


used for our etherchannel

For SwitchB since we only have one router with MAC address EEE

It will pick one of the physical interfaces so ALL traffic from the router will
be sent down interface fa0/13 OR fa0/14

One of the physical links won't be used at all

18
Etherchannel

In this case it's better to change the


load balancing mechanism

Change it to destination MAC address on SwitchB

Traffic from our router to the computer will be load balanced amongst
the different physical interfaces

because we have multiple computers with different destination MAC


addresses 19

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